Editing Tip: Narrative Multicam in FCPX

A few days ago I came across this great post on PremiumBeat about using the Multicam feature in Final Cut Pro X to optimize your workflow for narrative work. Check out the video below and then I'll add a few thoughts.

FCPX multicam isn't just for concerts and live events. In this video tutorial we show you how to use multicam to better organize and edit your narrative projects. Need music for your video editing projects? Give us a listen: http://www.premiumbeat.com Got questions about the tutorial? Give Ben a shout on Twitter: https://twitter.com/benconsoli

This is not only great for single angle shots, but for multiple angles as well. More importantly, and something that isn't touched on in the video, is this is a great way to simplify colour-grading of a scene when using multiple takes.

If you've used FCPX before, you know that any colour grades (or any video effects) you make in the multicam timeline changes the every instance of the clip in the project timeline. Well, by using this technique you can quickly and easily apply a primary grade to every take in the multicam timeline, and then do your secondary corrections in the project timeline.

Big shoutout to @BenConsoli and PremiumBeat for a great tip.

A Radical Renovation

Earlier this year, through my work at Gamut Productions, I was lucky enough to be the editor of an hour-long documentary special covering a fantastic project called "Herowork Presents: The Mustard Seed - Radical Renovation", a $500,000 renovation of a local food bank and street church, done entirely by volunteers on a budget of only $250.

With an air-date only 14 days after the event, it was an extremely tight delivery. Working nearly 150 hours in those two weeks, and with the immeasurable assistance of Bryan Skinner, we were able to successfully complete and deliver the show to CHEK Television where it was met with great success. It even was given an encore airing later the same week due to demand from the community.

Below is a six-minute highlight reel of the documentary. Please check it out and head over to HeroWork to keep updated with their great work.

Contest!

UPDATE 2013/05/28 - Well I didn't make it to the finals, but I just wanted to say thank you for everyone who voted for my video. It was a fun contest to be part of. Congrats to the five finalists! You can follow the rest of the contest here: http://exposure-contest.ca

Original post follows:

It was little over three weeks ago that I came across a posting on a Facebook page about an editing contest. "Editing contest?" I thought to myself. "I am an editor, and I enjoy contests. Mayhaps I should investigate this further."

The Exposure Editing Contest has a simple premise - they shot a music video for a band, put the footage online, and let editors from all over the world download it and put together their own version of the music video in hopes that their edit be chosen and granted the "official music video" title.

Needless to say, I couldn't resist.

The best part? That band is question is Dear Rouge, and the song "Thinking About You" is pretty darn fantastic. (Both their EP's are great. Check them out at the end of this post.)

So, after an all night edit session — or as I like to call them, "the best kind of edit session" — I was finished with my edit and I promptly uploaded it to the contest. Here it is:

Which brings us to now - the contest part.

The top 3 vote-getters in the contest make it to the finals, along with 2 wildcard selections chosen by the band. Right now my video sits in ninth, so I need your help.

There are two ways you can vote:

1) You can click this link: exposure-contest.ca/vote/11/

2) If you have a Vimeo account (or feel inclined to make one) you can click the little heart icon in the top right of the video player to "like" the video. This counts as a vote.

And if you really like the video, you can do both!

Voting closes this Sunday, May 26th, at 11:59:59pm. That means only four more days to get those votes in!

Find out more about the Exposure Contest

Check out everything Dear Rouge

And follow them on Twitter: @ExposureContest, @DearRouge

FCPX - First Impressions

Yes, it looks like iMovie. Yes, it functions a lot like iMovie. No, this is not iMovie Pro.

The newest version of Final Cut Pro was finally released today, and after many questions about what I think of it, I figured I'd write up a few quick thoughts here. 

INTERFACE

First thing to notice is that the entire interface has be consolidated into one window. The good news about this is you don't have 7 different windows popping up and moving all over the place. The bad news is you have less customization over the layout. In fact, if you edit with two screens, you only have the option of either having the full Viewer on the second display, or having the media library on the second display. Depending on how you work this would be very frustrating.

And yes, it's very pretty.

THE TECHNICAL

If you're thinking of using FCPX as a professional business tool anytime soon, you'd best rethink your plan. While this software would be perfectly satisfactory if you were simply running a birthday/wedding video enterprise, for anyone out there seriosuly working in the professional video world, this just ain't gonna cut it. Gone are some key import/export features that sadly render this software almost completely useless if you have any serious work to do. 

THE CREATIVE

However despite all the technical limitations, within one hour of using the software I can safely say that actually editing with FCPX is an absolute joy.

As a test, I took a small film project I was currently working on in FCP7 and started again in FCPX. Sure I was just recreating the edit I had previously done, but it was easy and quick to accomplish. More importantly, I was able to make creative changes so quickly that I completely forgot about how I would have done the same edit in FCP7. There were a few occasions where I had to look up how to do a simple task that I could have done in the old software while blindfolded, but I'm fine with learning the new way to do things if it makes things easier, and in this case, it has.

Now I'm not going to wrap this up with any sort of conclusion; I need more time to come to that. A more detailed post will be forthcoming, once I've had a few days to play with it.

If you have any specific questions about FCPX and how it works, leave them in the comments below and I'll try to answer them as best I can.